


Countermeasures

by alexVakarian



Category: Hiveswap, Homestuck
Genre: Gen, Hacking, Hacktivism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-14
Updated: 2020-11-14
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:02:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,995
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27562726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alexVakarian/pseuds/alexVakarian
Summary: Mallek is undoubtedly one hell of a skilled programmer & hacker, and the Imperial Drones of the Condesce are the final challenge to test his abilities. If he managed to somehow control them, even if in small numbers, he would create a legacy for generations to come, but it wouldn't be easy nor safe, not by a long shot.
Kudos: 6





	Countermeasures

**Author's Note:**

> This is the second fic of a former collection of one-shot stories I did a few months ago. Having been completely redone, I want to consider this like some kind of a _'prequel'_ to the next one I'll upload, one dedicated to Polypa Goezee.

Mallek may be a cerulean with disgusting amounts of wealth thanks to his caste, but his true passion was everything related to the information technologies, knowing the cards in his opponents’ hands, and hack whatever it took to know and control the flow of information. This was one of those nights on Alternia, where there was no purpose in going around the city on his limo, or going full AFK in the sewers. He was on the organized mess that he called his own respiteblock, sitting in front of a screen illuminating in black and blue colors. On the desk, on one of the keyboard’s sides there was a small and very subtle device that, in the right hands, could be one hell of a powerful tool. Mallek was programming a Raspberry Pi, and searching in the deepest and most encrypted depths of the web the frequency in which another device (that would work together with the Raspberry) should transmit the data so it could, in theory, disable an imperial drone. Even if their origin is organic, they have an extensive system of electronics implants and upgrades, making them more like robots than anything else. In practice, this means that any sensory input they receive and process is nothing more than ones and zeros, information that is no more than raw binary at its core, and if it is like that, then it could be altered, infected, and corrupted. This was a challenge far too tempting for Mallek to just ignore.

In practice, if what he programmed was to work, it would do it like a homemade _flashbang_ , but for synthetics. This countermeasure would be able to overload the scanning systems of an imperial drone by releasing in an instant overwhelming amounts of garbage data, effectively overloading the drone’s systems while it is forced to process all that illegible information received at once. Of course, this saturation and overload wouldn’t last forever, as the drone would soon restart its systems in order to retake functions (If done right, it wouldn’t be detected as an attack to alert the HQ, but just as an unexpected bug in the system instead), but, that timeframe…? If Mallek played his cards right and planned carefully every action, that simple half a minute (or a whole one, if he attacked one of the small ones) would be just enough time for him to introduce the Raspberry Pi in the drone and… from there, the possibilities are virtually unlimited. He could obtain all the information related to subroutines & high-level processes, with enough subtlety he could alter the sensorial information of the drone without needing more invasive means that the unit would detect, maybe even making that drone the perfect backdoor for the central systems, to hack or even control drones at a massive scale. If Mallek succeeded, the only limit would be the sky.

Still, when a single error between all those lines of code could mean that his maybe only potential backdoor to the planet’s central security system would be closed, he simply couldn’t skimp on testing his code time, and time, and time again. Running test after test, trying many different software to see if one detected the intrusion of the virus, from simple tests in virtual machines to performing a _Troll In The Middle_ attack in a LAN network to see if the security programs detected something out of the ordinary in their routine scans; if he was going to do this, he had to make sure he would do it right.

Of course, in the end it didn’t really matter how many tests he did on his code, those were controlled experiments in a controlled environment, with many of the variables that would determine the success or failure of his attempt simply not there, they were outside, where AFK life happened, where this system got consummated with its price paid in the spilled blood of lowbloods culled for simply existing.

Mallek had little time left on this planet, he knew that well; but if he was going out of Alternia, he would make it with a bang, not with a whimper. 

He knew very well that any standard electronic communication method existing on this planet would be tapped to read & hear his conversations, a totalitarian system simply doesn’t win such a horrific reputation by respecting the privacy of its citizens after all. Because of that, sometimes it was safer physical or IRL communication, even the pen & the paper could get to be safer than an electronic conversation whose privacy ends the moment you click on the app.

He changed his clothes, he couldn’t wear anything that others could use to identify him; he may be a cerulean that had it easy compared to other castes, but there were still other trolls fervently loyal to a system that gave them everything they could ever wish for. He changed his hoodie to a one with no sign, removed as many piercings as he could, if he was going to cause some mayhem, he would do it from an untraceable anonymity. Mallek put in his backpack two sets of his homemade ‘flashbangs’ along with the corresponding Raspberry Pi to hack on the drones, a throwaway palmhusk that had its battery removed to kept it out of the radar, a plyer, screwdrivers of different heads, double-sided duct tape, all those fancy tools to be able to act on the immobilized imperial drone in question. He also carried a husktop to make sure _on the field_ that everything would go smooth, or to adapt to any problem should them arise; after all, he had to be prepared, as plans are useless (there is no plan that survives first contact with the enemy), but planning is indispensable.

Mallek called Diemen, that little boy was a good guy that didn’t deserve what happened to his hive and lusus, and told him that he needed a favor from him: For the night, Diemen would have to take a ride on his limo, to go around the city in it, but keeping a low profile and avoiding as much as possible the drones. Mallek would use him to disguise his identity, as no one would suspect that a ceruleanblood like him would do what he was going to do if he himself was seen roaming around the city minding his own business. As it was expected, Diemen accepted the request; even if Mallek wouldn’t have offered him oblong meat products as payment he would have still accepted, it wouldn’t hurt no one if he have himself a rest from that indomitable nomadic lifestyle.

This was going to be dangerous, in retrospective the idea was stupid, but when the time on this planet was running out for him, when he was just perigees away from being exiled, he could allow himself to use some more _direct_ tactics. Go big or go home, kiddo, this was no longer the time to hesitate for not wanting to risk your neck, you are either a 0 or a 1, and this was the time choose. Even if Mallek wasn’t vocally in favor of a worldwide violent revolution, it wouldn’t have mattered all that time he spent refining his skills (both informatic and social engineering ones) if for just some doubts he would have thrown in the towel in the most important moment, now.

For that reason, he had first to fulfill a promise he made to a good girl some time ago, no one knows if this will be the last chance to keep his word. Mallek opens his palmhusk, he has there a program he created himself to communicate keeping an end-to-end cyphering that would work as the first line of defense against any intrusive analysis of the government. But nonetheless, being careful enough would never be bad.

SB: 68747470733a2f2f796f7574752e62652f6451773477395767586351;  
SB: here = what i promised you; the info about the recipe;  
SB: being so close to your final hour really puts things in perspective;  
SB: you know very well what this implies for both of us; im doing this for your own good;  
SB: the food i sent you lacked salt; so i hashed some into it;  
_SnakeBytes sent 8b5d548174db1316a1390ea9cde4da9cee152a0ff639508c3a2995a4c6aa971f.jpg, a picture containing a dead grub bathed in a red candy._  
SB: reality can manage to be from time to time very meta; dont forget about your data;  
SB: take care; ‘zy; i’ll see you on the other side; 

One less loose end, it was time to go out.

Mallek got on his rocket board, and from the terrace on his hive he quickly got out of there, he had to go to a part of the city where drone transit was scarce, but at the same time far away enough to keep his anonymity safe, where no peeping eye could associate him with who he really is.

Both in the higher ends and the rougher subgrubs of the city were full of imperial drones, in the former it was to protect & serve the highbloods in everything they would need, while in the latter it was more about shooting lowbloods left & right before claiming it was in self-defense. His safest option was the city outskirts where both troll and drone population was lower and more scattered. After a few minutes he found himself outside of a train station, he had left his rocket board hidden between some bushes as he had no way to carry it in a practical way. There were no more than six trolls on the station, some talking, some sleeping, perfect for doing this without drawing much attention.  
But… How do you draw enough attention for an imperial drone to come here?

It was time to cause some problems.

Mallek couldn’t reveal his identity nor do anything that would risk that, so he sat against the outer wall, opened his husktop, and from there he connected to the station’s network, not without spoofing his Mac Adress first, something simple but ridiculously important when it came down to masking his identity. Once he did that, from the station’s network he used a false account to publish on Chittr some… interesting posts, about the reality of society in Alternia and the hemoespectrum, something that no doubt would attract Big Grubber’s attention.

And indeed, after making those posts and keeping himself concealed near the place, it didn’t take long to arrive… a full patrol of drones.

That was not ideal.

Mallek instantly noticed two small drones along with one of the big ones, a perfect extermination team to cull whoever was reckless enough to post online such daring commentaries about the social & political system of the beloved Condesce. He had no chance against the big boy, its armor was far too thick to be able to pierce it in such little time with a damn screwdriver. These things were made to withstand heavy artillery fire on the interstellar battlefield, what the hell could do a guy with just a screwdriver and duct tape?  
It was time to realize the art of war.

Mallek knew he had no chance against the three of them at the same time, for both their very evident physical superiority and their software upgrades when they were in herd (hive intelligence after all). _Divide et impera_ was the name of his game, he needed to separate them for enough time for him to infiltrate in the hardware of one of the smaller ones and that way test his new creation. 

But they were already arriving here, they were about to interrogate the few trolls present on the station and who knows if also something else in case they don’t find the author of the publications, something Mallek Adalov was not willing to carry on his consciousness. They could play dirty on the life of others, he doesn’t, he needed not just test his new creation, but also to keep his (involuntary) baits safe in the process, and the clock already started to make tick, tock; tick, tock.  
Tick, tock. 

The clock was ticking, Mallek had to think of a plan right now, and just in that moment he had an idea: His rocket board. It would buy him enough time to be able to devise a way of how to face the drones. He would go towards his loyal friend, that was still hidden in the bushes in the forest at one side of the station, to turn it on, he would use the combustion of its fuel to create a fire that will attract the attention of the imperial drones. Those fuckers have thermal vision like if they are some damned Yautja, and he would use their own advantage against them.

He immediately ran towards his rocket board, still hidden in forest near the station between some bushes. He turns it on, but instead of getting on it, he points the turbines’ exhaust nozzles towards the floor, directing there the infernal heat and flames that didn’t take long to create a fire on the grass, that quickly started to spread at this end of the forest while Mallek got out of there in parallel to the station to keep himself at a safe distance from both places to remain concealed while hiding his rocket board elsewhere, he would need it to escape from here. On the other hand, the drones didn’t take long before noticing this enormous new source of heat, something that wasn’t there a few seconds ago, so the patrol sent the bigger drone to investigate what this new variable in the ambience was about, if there was a cullable troll in the zone ready to be sent to a mass grave.

One less, two remain. 

The big one was busy now, but it wouldn’t be forever, Mallek had won at most a few extra minutes with this, but he was annoying them, and annoyed imperial drones can manage to be very… _murdery_ , something that was not good for neither him nor the trolls that were now required to be lined up ready to be processed when the big drone returns. He needed to separate them, but using a new tactic at the same time, as a new fire would compromise his capacity to remain hidden, his location would be far easier to track if there were less places where he could be. What are his options? He had to think fast, he could create distractions, but nothing that would put the drones on state of alert, he needed them to maintain their guard down to be able to open and keep it that way his backdoor to their systems, if Mallek alerted them they could notice it, a risk he could not take, not now. But… what could he do? Using his countermeasure to disable both of the small drones would raise suspicions from the big one, two imperial drones out of service would be a coincidence far too suspicious, he needed to separate one to be able to hack it, but using a tactic subtle enough for no one to notice. 

And just then, he had an idea.

Mallek remembered the throwaway palmhusk he had in his backpack, with its battery removed to keep it out of the radar until he needed it, and now it was its moment to shine. He took it out of there, put the battery in and turned it on, he would use it as a bait to make an imperial drone go inside the train station, where he would deactivate it without risk of alerting the others, this was his best option, this was his only option.

He silently approached the station from the opposite direction of the imperial drones to keep himself out of their line of sight. The main one was still felling burning trees in search of the origin of this suspicious fire, distracted and away from the action happening in the station. After getting from his backpack the tools needed for the next encounter, such as his own new countermeasure, the Raspberry Pi, two screwdrivers and a double-sided duct tape; Mallek left the backpack leaned against the concrete wall with everything he would not use, before proceeding. He quickly saw an opened window nearby, a perfect place from where he would introduce the bait to get one of them inside the station while the other stayed on the platform. Just like before, divide et impera.

The walls of the building kept him concealed enough from the thermal scans to manage to get close enough to the open window, where he slipped in his throwaway palmhusk. It had its sound activated, and some loud music turned on to generate enough noise to catch the attention of one of those imperial fuckers, and it quickly had success in its objective. As soon as the palmhusk started to reproduce the song, one of the drones decided it had to investigate that, moving away from the other that was guarding the group of trolls, who soon would have to pay for all these _strange_ coincidences. Mallek went around the outer walls of the building to get inside through a ventilation grill (that he loosened with one of his screwdrivers), away from where he left his palmhusk fall to the ground, and when he saw one of the two drones enter, he trusted with all his faith in the walls, that just before helped him get closer and inside, now would also help him so the effects of his _flashbang_ (although it wasn’t exactly that, it was still a good way to conceptualize it) would not get out of there, or at least not in the direction of the other drone that was still one the platform, waiting for the results of this new inspection. 

It was time, no more fooling around aimlessly, he was either a 0 or a 1, and Mallek decided he was a 1. From the other side of the room (you could hardly call it other way, as the station was itself pretty small, just a stop in the railway), and hidden from the direct sight of the imperial drone, with his right hand he threw his creation towards it, colliding with the window wall before falling to the ground, catching the attention of the drone that got closer to inspect it just before it exploded.

And in the blink of an eye, before the imperial drone could even process the object it had just seen fall after colliding with the window, all of its systems stopped, all of its subroutines suddenly ceased, the drone was… frozen.  
His creation had worked.

This success gave a direct adrenaline injection to an already agitated Mallek, but he quickly recovered his focus to keep going with his plan, with everything he planned and strove for that would be made or broken depending on what he did during the next sixty seconds.

It was time to act, and fast.

Mallek Adalov immediately stood up, and trying to make as little noise as possible (hoping for his disposable palmhusk to cover his steps), he approached the temporarily disabled drone who, in what you could assume is the upper half of its back, had a ventilation grid, which would be his ticket to the hardware inside. The ceruleanblood used a screwdriver to rapidly remove the grid which, even if it was somewhat far of the propulsion reactors, the air inside coming out was very hot, although still tolerable. Before he got in through there, Mallek had put the duct tape on the back of the Raspberry Pi, so when he managed to open the drone’s vent grid, he simply sticked it to a metal wall on the interior, where it would be virtually undetectable. From that hidden position, undetectable due to all the metal surrounding it, the Raspberry Pi would have a passive function of relaying back to Mallek all info coming to and from the imperial drone, being able to activate or deactivate from afar to keep hidden and safe this backdoor, and be used only when needed. After all, you can’t detect something that doesn’t transmit heat, it’s made of the same material than that of its surroundings, and that doesn’t even transmit data in any wave when deactivated, it was a true ghost inside this imperial unit. But it also had another function, a more… active one; if it was turned on, Mallek could use it to, from there and with minimal input lag, control from a distance the drone itself, maybe even a complete squadron of them from this single unit, without anyone noticing, under the nose of the Condesce herself. 

But these thoughts didn’t distract the ceruleanblood, not when every single moment mattered right the hell now. After introducing his Raspberry Pi inside the drone, Mallek quickly put the ventilation grid back in place before exiting the building from the same loosened vent grill he entered before, with just seconds to spare before the imperial drone reactivated. Mallek, after exiting, grabbed his backpack and got away from the station, with enough distance to not be detected for the time being so, after hiding behind two big boulders, he immediately took his husktop out and turned it on, it was time to see if his little creation worked as intended inside the drone.  
And hell yes it did.

After connecting to the Raspberry Pi, in a designated folder he saw how rapidly it started to fill, filled with text files that acted as logs of the imperial drone’s activities: From orders received to comms directed towards the other units here, Mallek was getting records of all the transmissions that went through this thing.

The transmissions confirmed the best possible scenario: The unit assumed it simply bugged out for a moment, that the overload was not caused by an external agent and that the palmhusk is only a false positive, as there were no heat lectures inside the building (well… it was, before being stomped and destroyed by the drone).

It was just then that Mallek noticed in one of the logs an order… a bad one, to say the least: The big boy was back, this offense to the Condesce & the system could not be forgiven. If the responsible for this was not going to surrender, they would execute all the trolls on the station to make sure the outlaw would not get out alive.

Fuck.

He had to do something.

If there was a moment where he would test his theory of remote controlling them… it would have to be now, there was not a “later” for this, and there was no time for fancy fully fleshed out code. Mallek immediately weighed his options, and due to the desperate nature of the situation he opted for the safest one. From his husktop, he executed a rootkit to obtain access to the drone’s systems through his backdoor inside the unit itself. He may not have direct control due to its partially organic nature, but he could hack the comms to act as an intermediary in them, both from the central database and between the drones themselves, manipulating the info and the orders, essentially performing a _Troll In The Middle Attack_ to control them, even if indirectly. 

And after a few seconds, after some goddamned arduous seconds that felt like eons while the rootkit loaded and the attacked was performed through scripts to speed up the process, he… he finally saw the results of what he just did.

He had succeeded.

Mallek had made it, he was controlling them.

As soon as he had control, he established a new directive for the three drones: They would let them go, the author of the messages had been captured on the city after discovering they were sent from afar, they were captured and soon to be culled, the trolls here had nothing to do with what happened.

After receiving the new orders from above, the drones, just as abruptly as they arrived, they left the place to go back to the city, leaving the trolls on the platform alone while in the distance the train finally arrived, after what seemed like an awful eternity, for them to get on the damn thing and leave this station once and for all.

After all of that and right after the imperial drones left the station, Mallek picked up his rocket board to quickly leave the place, no one could know that _he_ was here, not even the trolls that had just been through so much, in so little time. So, after getting onto his personal vehicle, he headed back straight to his hive, his hideout, his safe place.

And it was just then, when he was surfing on the sky with his rocket board (first on the outskirts, then in the city), after the adrenaline injection stopped having effect, as he was no longer in a immediate threat, that reality punched him right in his face.

He… he had done it, he had achieved it, he was controlling the drones, he could control them at will as long as he acted as a (ghostly) intermediary between them and the central database, with just a few tweaks to his code and with just a little bit of luck…

He could own the system. He could not only know everyone’s cards, he could manipulate everyone’s deck, he could manipulate the goddamn system under the damn nose of who were above him on the spectrum. He just needed more time, he just needed a solar sweep to manage to achieve something that maybe no one else had done before, he just… he just needed more time.

But that was not something that was going to happen, that was not something he would obtain. His time on this planet was running out, he would soon be exiled, and there was nothing that he could do to avoid it; he could hack maybe even the entire system to own it, but he simply couldn’t hack time, it would be a lost fight from the very beginning. This victory would soon be buried into oblivion due to its insignificance on the grand scheme of things: Thanks to the system, he would simply not have enough time to make a change, no matter what he did, there was no enough time for this to truly matter. But… even if this would happen, even if this was true…

He could, in deepest, most encrypted parts of the dark web, leave the fruits of his work for someone in the future, with the time he doesn’t have in the present, to access it and use it to its full potential, that would be his legacy here. If he, for some reason, can’t make anything happen in space, if for some reason things go sideways and he ends up on the other side before he manages to make a change, he would lay the foundations for someone else to finish what he started.

Being so close to be exiled really puts things into perspective.

Mallek was arriving to his hive, but he wouldn’t go directly there yet, not without first going to another place to take a small break on the roof of one of the endless buildings that make up this decadent thing called Thrashthrust. He stopped there to give himself a rest, to recover his breath after everything he just did, after all not every night you manage not only to deactivate and make your way into the hardware of an imperial drone, but also you managed to fucking _control_ it. His mind was still rushing a thousand thoughts a second, but his body was relaxing, his breath getting calmer. It felt good for him to give a moment for himself, and himself only, to slowly clear the mind and relax the body while being alone on the rooftop of a building in the zenith of the night.

And it was right there, in that moment of pure calmness _after_ the storm, that his palmhusk, the one he always carried for personal use, started to sound and vibrate. Someone was calling him; an unknown number had dialed him.

Mallek immediately regained his focus, and answered, waiting for the voice on the other side to talk while he instantly started to examine every detail in his surroundings, every rooftop, every nearby window in search of at the very least a single clue of whom the troll who’s contacting him might be, but all that effort was futile as he didn’t manage to notice anything out of the norm, not while the masculine voice started to speak on the other side of the palmhusk. They weren’t here to hand him to the system for what he has managed to do, not at all, instead, they were here for… business, pure business.

The voice on the other side of the call didn’t take long to declare their intentions, as they had an interesting offer to propose, one that Mallek would hardly reject: If he wanted to take out at least one idiot from this world, if he wanted to defeat even if just a single troll from the 1% of the 1%, the voice on the other side of the call would hire him for this job, to give him a chance to make this gray world a little bit less miserable before being sent off into space.  
An offer that, evidently, Mallek Adalov would accept. If he wasn’t going to change the world, at the very least he would contribute his part to make it less of an absolute dumpster fire.

But for now, Mallek focused just in finally going back to his hive, entering his respiteblock, and collapsing on the floor to rest there for what remained of the night. He has had enough action for the time being, he had earned a rest. Tomorrow he’ll resume his actions, for now it was time to relax in peace and carefully plan his next movement.


End file.
